Monday, October 31, 2011

Happy Halloween from Craiova

Dear Friends and Family:

Well, it's that time of the year again....presents and Christmas trees, reindeer and elves, candy canes and wreaths. Oh wait, hold on, wrong holiday. I meant to say...Happy Halloween!!! This year, Halloween happens to fall right on my P-day! Well, it will probably be just like any other p-day. Romanians don't really do much for Halloween (at least they don't do the stuff Americans do, like Trick or Treating) I was thinking today that us 4 here in Craiova could go trick or treating in the blocs! Wouldn't that be fun! I don't have a costume, unfortunately. Anyways, I hope you all have a good Halloween over there in the states. I'll try and have a good one here and avoid any vampires. I'm talkin' real vampires! They really do exist here...ok, maybe not. I have always liked this time of the year, when tree leaves fade into brown and dark yellow, when it gets a little more chilly, and when you see a few real orange pumpkins amidst a piata full of CABBAGE! Romania loves its cabbage. I do too. (But seriously, the piata behind our apartment has about 20,000 cabbages, and under one of the carts of them are about 5 pumpkins.)

We actually had a really fun branch Halloween party on Saturday night. We had lots of people (20 to 30, consisting of us missionaries, members, and english students and investigators). Sora Spooner dressed up like a witch and had a few fun games all planned out for us, including pumpkin carving and cookie decorating. There were lots of little treats and suc and decorations. I had a fun time and got a few good pictures. I like the holidays. Is it really already November tomorrow? I'm coming up on my one year mark in the country in just a week! It's already been a whole year since I was leaving the MTC and started it all in Bacau! Here in Craiova, it's been fun. The weather is still nice, just a bit chilly 35 to 50ish degrees.

It's been an alright week in terms of missionary work. Elder Rasmussen and I are getting along fine. We have been meeting with our only real progressing investigators: Alin and Gina. Both are super awesome and are wanting to be baptized. Alin is a very faithful guy (about 20) and wants to be baptized, but needs to quit smoking. We've met with him twice this week and have talked about Joseph Smith and the gospel steps. Gina is a student here at the University and is doing well. She will be baptized towards the end of November. We have recently been reading out of the Doctrine and Covenants a little bit with her. Otherwise, we have no other real investigators at the moment. We need to get finding more!!! Even if it means lots of blocs during the night-time. The other elders are doing well. As for the apartment, we're still all living together. Elder Rasmussen and I found a good apartment a little bit northwest of centru, and we were given the keys to it even. We were going to move in, but waited in case the proprietar (who had been in Bucharest) didn't like our contract (Side note, apparently, not a lot of people agree with the our contract. I don't know why.) We are only allowed to use OUR contract. It turns out the proprietar didn't like it. We had been working with his brother or friend and an agency guy. I guess they assumed the proprietar would be ok with our contract. He told our office he doesn't agree with some things on it. So, we have nothing else to do with that apartment. We had to give them the keys back. Now, we're hoping on a backup (one near centru and the other elders' apartment) and we hope to get into that one in the next few days. Fun stuff it is.

Anyways, it's all been good stuff. We had interviews with president and the AP's Wednesday. It was good to talk with them. We have a great beginner's english class. On Saturday, we had 13 or 14 people, which is a lot more than I'm used to (in Bucharest, they were lousy). We did the famous cup object lesson as a spiritual thought (where you label principles and ordinances of Christ's church on cups and then stack them up as if you are building His church. Then you take out the "prophets and apostles" cup from the bottom and it all falls! Then read Ephesians 2 :20 or 21...about Christ's church being built on the foundation of prophets and apostles.) Church was good too. It's a tiny branch, but the active members are cool. Well, anyways, I'm about done here. Thanks mom and dad for all the cool news. I'm excited for the Matts and for Chase. Congrats! Get feeling better mom! I hope BYU won against TCU. Have a great week, and we'll mai vorbim. Love you all. Ciao!